“Let me be represented as one who trusts his senses, who thinks he knows the things he sees and feels, and entertains no doubts of their existence.” -- Bishop Berkeley

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Monday, March 19, 2012

A Bad Argument for Gay Marriage

I saw this on Facebook today: "Claiming that someone else's marriage is against your religion is like being angry at someone for eating a doughnut because you're on a diet."

Well, not really, the difference being that few doughnut eaters ask for public recognition and approval of their doughnut eating by acquiring a license that gives them certain special privileges as doughnut eaters. Now, this is no argument against gay marriage: rather, it is an argument against the silly idea that it is none of the public's business who will be allowed marriage certificates. The right way to argue for gay marriage is to say, "Well, this is one sort of relationship that we ought to be publicly acknowledging." (Libertarians, of course, have a coherent argument for simply getting government out of the marriage business altogether, which solves this problem in a quite different fashion.)